The news this month that the College of Law will provide bespoke training at Pannone, the Manchester-based law firm, marks an important step in the coming of age of tailor-made legal training.

Until now, this kind of customised training was the preserve of the largest City outfits. With Linklaters and Clifford Chance taking the lead, it seemed that the top firms were disappearing into a gated legal educational community from which the riff-raff were excluded.

For Pannone to be persuaded to take part suggests that there is more to this than meets the eye.

The firm is highly regarded for its record on diversity, appearing regularly in The Sunday Times’s 100 Best Companies to Work For. Andrea Cohen, a training partner, says that the attraction of setting up the bespoke approach includes the prospect of trainees working together as a group on their Legal Practice Course (LPC) before starting their training contract “and continuing to train and develop together as they progress. This will cement their relationships with each other and with the firm and ensure a consistency of approach and knowledge.”

So with a growing number of firms committed to bespoke LPCs, will all firms that can afford to, go “private”, while the rest are stuck with “bog-standard” LPCs?

Leading LPC providers, such as the College of Law and BPP, are keen to broker as many deals as possible, both for their bespoke and the LPC-Plus (for consortia of firms) offerings.

Scott Slorach, of the College of Law, says that the firms involved are warmly appreciative of the benefits. “On the tailored firm-specific and LPC-Plus programmes. We are getting good feedback from both firms and trainees,” he says.

“They’re saying that we’re giving them relevant law in the context of the firm, its practice areas and its clients. [As a result] the trainees are starting practice with a better knowledge of law and the firm. They appreciate the opportunity to familiarise themselves with their firm’s precedents, which we integrate into their LPC.”

But opinions remain divided. Take the 15 or so UK trainees recruited annually by the leading firm Shearman & Sterling. They can attend one of several providers on its preferred list of colleges and certainly do not arrange that they should all be trained together.

Laurence Levy, a partner at the London office, says: “We understand that a firm like Linklaters is trying to close the gap as fast as possible between the new graduates who arrive on the LPC and the polished professionals who must emerge at the end of the training.

“Our approach is very different. We are highly selective so that we get very good recruits who are already business-savvy. We bring them together regularly for social events so they start to bond with the firm.

“Most important, though, the tenor of our training ethos is that the firm recognises the importance of tailoring training to meet specific client needs.”

Nonetheless, there is a distinct move within the profession to make the LPC ever more directly relevant to practice.

The new structure will come in over the next couple of years. Stage 1 will consist of business law and practice, property law and practice, litigation, professional conduct and regulation, taxation, and wills and administration of estates; stage 2 of three vocational electives. These changes will introduce much greater flexibility into the whole LPC experience.

Welcomed by institutions such as Nottingham Law School because it offers “multiple pathways”, it will enable every LPC to be better adapted to the needs of its particular students. “For example, smaller providers will be able to focus on high street practice where their students are more likely to end up,” says Bob White, of Nottingham.

In short, the new arrangements will open up a tailored (or at least semi-tailored) opportunity for all. Look out for some weird and wonderful designs.

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